Manager on the Crewe game
Manager Greg Abbott spoke to us about the New Year’s Day game at Gresty Road shortly after full time on Tuesday.
“I’ve just said on the radio that the main feelings for us are anger and disappointment. If you look at this game, and the Shrewsbury game, we should be sitting with another six points. If we’d done that then things would look massively different for us.
“We’re happier with the performances and we know we’re getting closer to where we want to be, but we’ve given points away and we are never going to be pleased about that. We can’t keep talking about games where we’ve played well but have nothing to show for it. If we want to push up the league then we have to be taking the points when we’ve been the better side.
“We thought we’d got rid of the silly mistakes and that is something we still want to address. Credit to the lads because they have looked much more solid recently, but the difference today was an individual error which cost us. Danny [Livesey] has held his hands up, and in a game which was tight and which was always going to be decided by the odd goal, that moment has been the difference.
“We created chances, some very good chances, and again we have to be taking those if we’re going to really push things on. We don’t want to become a side which plays well and loses games. We saw against Hartlepool and Bury that we can back ourselves if we do things properly, so we have to keep improving at both ends of the pitch. We are getting there but we have to start winning these games where we have long periods on top.
“We were very happy with our shape today. Crewe are a decent side and we knew there would be times when we would have to let them have the ball. That happened, but we defended well apart from that one moment. When we got the ball we tried to hurt them, and with a bit of luck we’d have got the goal we deserved.
“Jon-Paul McGovern was probably our best player in terms of creating chances and his set pieces caused problems all day. We stuck with that and we were unfortunate with the chances we did get that one of them didn’t go in. We always make our substitutions to try to have an impact, and I thought Rory [Loy] looked really sharp when he came on.
“Overall we played well and the upset comes from the fact the result doesn’t reflect that. As I say, we’re looking a much better side and if we keep doing things properly those results will come. We’ll look at things in the cold light of day over the rest of this week and there are positives for us to take. We’ll feel sorry for ourselves tonight but we’ll be back tomorrow and ready to go as we prepare for what will be a tough one against Swindon.
“The fans stayed behind and gave us a fantastic round of applause at the end, and we really do appreciate that. They were magnificent and they’ve seen their side try to do the job for them. They’ll always respond to that even when they are as disappointed as we are that we haven’t got anything to show for it.”
